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Authors: Chris Bohjalian
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days, but I found I couldn’t write. The doctors said it was just my imagination. Wrong. When I was that medicated, I
had
no imagination.
That
was the problem. So, I try and stick to the antidepressants, and I am on a way lower dosage than I was when I was living with Poacher and downing painkillers like M&M’s.)
The woods weren’t super thick, and it couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile to get back to the main road, Route 100. I wanted to go north, but it was amazing what I saw: all traffic was going south. Route 100 is a main road in Vermont—it goes all the way from Canada to Massachusetts, I think—but this is still Vermont, so it’s only two lanes. And both lanes were being used to move people south, away from Newport and Reddington. And the lanes were packed. It was cars and trucks moving at a crawl as far as I could see. The people who had motorcycles or bicycles were weaving in and out and along the shoulders and making much better time than the vehicles. There were these two poor volunteer firefighters who were trying to direct traffic, and they were so out of their league. They couldn’t have been a whole lot older than me, and things had really gone to shit since our buses had arrived at the college a few hours earlier. People were screaming at the two guys, and some dudes were honking their horns (like that was going to make a difference). Between the wind and the rain and the occasional thunder and the horns and the drivers who were yelling out their windows, it was madness. Everyone was so scared they were batshit crazy. I saw that the back of one pickup truck wasfilled with little kids—some were toddlers!—and there were two women who must have been my mom’s age watching them. They were trying to hold this blue tarp over the children, and some of the kids were just wailing. Who puts (what I guess was) some little preschool in the back of a pickup? People who are scared shitless and just not thinking straight, that’s who. I saw one station wagon that had a wooden desk with the drawers held shut with duct tape hitched to the top, and another that had four cat boxes—with cats in them!—strapped to the bars of a roof rack. There was one SUV after another filled with so much stuff that you couldn’t see inside. There were people trying to get away on tractors and on horseback, and I saw one Mini Cooper that looked like a clown car: I swear they must have wedged seven or eight people inside it. I suppose some of those people ended up among the walkers. Maybe they’d run out of gas eventually. That happened to lots of people, I understand.
So, I just started walking north against the traffic. And even on the side of the road, walking against the flow was really hard: think salmon. (And, yes, I was as wet as a fish. But I probably looked more like a wet cat.) I could tell that everyone thought I was a lunatic. People, usually moms and ladies who looked to me like grandmothers, would yell at me to stop, to turn around, to go the other way, and some folks even opened their car doors and asked me to get in. I ignored them all and finally started to run. I knew I couldn’t run or walk all the way back to Reddington, but I figured eventually I would find someone going in that direction.
And eventually I did.
Not far from the college I saw a Johnson fire engine stopped at a gas station at an intersection. The driver was standing beside his door and talking on his cell phone. I could see someone else was sitting in the passenger seat. I stood just close enough to figure out that he was getting instructions: he was supposed to go to some staging point near Newport where he would be given more information on what to do, and someone was telling him what alternate road to take since he sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to buckthe tide on Route 100. When he climbed back into the truck and shut his door, I jumped onto the metal back step and held on to the side rails. I had the kind of
had
no imagination.
That
was the problem. So, I try and stick to the antidepressants, and I am on a way lower dosage than I was when I was living with Poacher and downing painkillers like M&M’s.)
The woods weren’t super thick, and it couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile to get back to the main road, Route 100. I wanted to go north, but it was amazing what I saw: all traffic was going south. Route 100 is a main road in Vermont—it goes all the way from Canada to Massachusetts, I think—but this is still Vermont, so it’s only two lanes. And both lanes were being used to move people south, away from Newport and Reddington. And the lanes were packed. It was cars and trucks moving at a crawl as far as I could see. The people who had motorcycles or bicycles were weaving in and out and along the shoulders and making much better time than the vehicles. There were these two poor volunteer firefighters who were trying to direct traffic, and they were so out of their league. They couldn’t have been a whole lot older than me, and things had really gone to shit since our buses had arrived at the college a few hours earlier. People were screaming at the two guys, and some dudes were honking their horns (like that was going to make a difference). Between the wind and the rain and the occasional thunder and the horns and the drivers who were yelling out their windows, it was madness. Everyone was so scared they were batshit crazy. I saw that the back of one pickup truck wasfilled with little kids—some were toddlers!—and there were two women who must have been my mom’s age watching them. They were trying to hold this blue tarp over the children, and some of the kids were just wailing. Who puts (what I guess was) some little preschool in the back of a pickup? People who are scared shitless and just not thinking straight, that’s who. I saw one station wagon that had a wooden desk with the drawers held shut with duct tape hitched to the top, and another that had four cat boxes—with cats in them!—strapped to the bars of a roof rack. There was one SUV after another filled with so much stuff that you couldn’t see inside. There were people trying to get away on tractors and on horseback, and I saw one Mini Cooper that looked like a clown car: I swear they must have wedged seven or eight people inside it. I suppose some of those people ended up among the walkers. Maybe they’d run out of gas eventually. That happened to lots of people, I understand.
So, I just started walking north against the traffic. And even on the side of the road, walking against the flow was really hard: think salmon. (And, yes, I was as wet as a fish. But I probably looked more like a wet cat.) I could tell that everyone thought I was a lunatic. People, usually moms and ladies who looked to me like grandmothers, would yell at me to stop, to turn around, to go the other way, and some folks even opened their car doors and asked me to get in. I ignored them all and finally started to run. I knew I couldn’t run or walk all the way back to Reddington, but I figured eventually I would find someone going in that direction.
And eventually I did.
Not far from the college I saw a Johnson fire engine stopped at a gas station at an intersection. The driver was standing beside his door and talking on his cell phone. I could see someone else was sitting in the passenger seat. I stood just close enough to figure out that he was getting instructions: he was supposed to go to some staging point near Newport where he would be given more information on what to do, and someone was telling him what alternate road to take since he sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to buckthe tide on Route 100. When he climbed back into the truck and shut his door, I jumped onto the metal back step and held on to the side rails. I had the kind of
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